The poet, Lisitzky, gives us some explanation of his humble silence in this autobiography. Rich in sadness and beauty, Lisitzky limns with great artistry his wretched youth, and sketches somber portraits of orphan hood, poverty and melancholy. With a kind of lustful glee and self inflicted pain of a person shedding the burden of many years that has subdued his tongue and pen, he bares the dark sides of his soul, the sense of inferiority deeply rooted in him since early youth because of his humble origins, even as he tells of the ambition to elevate himself which he harbored in his heart, to blot out his "disgrace." He describes the humiliations and setbacks that from the start imbued him with a wrath and desperation which remained with him until, at the age of sixteen, he left his town in White Russia to find refuge in the land of his father's sojourning, the United States. These childhood impressions which Lisitzky described so well when he grew to maturity gave a dark tinge to his poetry, which fisrt blossomed in a remote Canadian village, and which has since flowered and grown profusely. Lisitzky's poetry is wide in range, diverse in form. It includes lyrical meditation, odes and sonnets, a massive lyrical drama, narratives of Jewish and general content, an epic of American Indian lore and a variety of Negro spirituals.